JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY最新文献

{"title":"Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die by Steven Nadler (review)","authors":"John Grey","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909133","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909133","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die by Steven Nadler John Grey Steven Nadler. Think Least of Death: Spinoza on How to Live and How to Die. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2020. Pp. x + 234. Hardback, $39.95. Think Least of Death is not just an interpretation of Spinoza, but a defense of his philosophy. Nadler develops Spinoza's arguments in ways that are intended both to reflect Spinoza's views and to persuade us that the views in question are true. He uses success language throughout to describe Spinoza's ideas (\"What Spinoza discovered, and what he wants us to know, is that . . .\" [11]) and arguments (\"Spinoza . . . has demonstrated, rigorously and a priori, that . . .\" [188]). Nadler is not just a Spinoza scholar here; he also thinks that Spinoza basically got it right. It would be a mistake, then, to evaluate Think Least of Death solely on its interpretive merits as a reading of Spinoza's Ethics. It is more fruitful to look at the places where Nadler not only describes, but apparently endorses, Spinoza's views. Following Nadler, I will focus here on the practical philosophy. Briefly put, Spinoza takes the right way of living to consist in adherence to the dictates of reason, which prescribe \"that everyone love himself, seek his own advantage . . . and 'absolutely, that everyone should strive to preserve his own being as far as he can'\" (191). These general principles issue in more specific directives based on facts about human nature. For instance, since the nature of the human mind is such that it always benefits from further understanding, reason directs us to strive for further understanding. To the extent that a human being lives in accordance with such dictates of reason, they will feel joyful, be free, and act virtuously. Conversely, when they are driven by their passions rather than reason, they will often feel sorrow, lack autonomy, and do things that are harmful to themselves and others. This is the source of whatever motivating power these directives have: necessarily, following them conduces to our self-interest. A crucial point for Nadler is that these facts about human nature are the same for each human being. This implies that \"there is in fact an objective, non-arbitrary determination of what constitutes a more perfect or ideal human being\" (28), the ideal that Spinoza variously refers to as the model of human nature or the free man. On Nadler's reading, Spinoza's notion of the free man (which he treats as equivalent to the model of human nature) is not \"some creature of the imagination or reflection of personal taste\" (29), but a representation of \"the ideal state toward which every individual [human] naturally and necessarily . . . strives\" (29). [End Page 708] A signal contribution of the book is to show that the free person's life is a realizable goal rather than an unattainable ideal. The free person is determined to act by reason alone, yes—but this is compatible with him or","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"253 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135706167","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe by John Skorupski (review)","authors":"J. P. Messina","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909137","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe by John Skorupski J. P. Messina John Skorupski. Being and Freedom: On Late Modern Ethics in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021. Pp. 560. Hardcover, $130.00. John Skorupski's Being and Freedom traces the development of modern ethics in France, Germany, and England, as set in motion by two great revolutions: the French Revolution and Kant's methodological revolution in the Critique of Pure Reason. I begin this review by offering [End Page 714] a brief summary of the book (which consists of eight lengthy chapters, an introduction, and a brief conclusion). I then raise some interpretive worries and offer an overall assessment. In chapter 1, Skorupski reminds us that the French Revolution, a physical struggle between opposing factions, was also a battleground of ideas. In opposing the ancien régime, revolutionaries took aim at the \"Catholic-feudal order\" (27). Underlying this order was an ethical view, \"holism,\" according to which a person lives well through excellent performance of community roles assigned by family, state, and church. When individual interests conflict with these social roles, the latter take precedence. Revolutionaries (partially inspired by Rousseau) railed against this. On their view, persons were born for freedom, not the chains of traditional life. To realize such freedom demanded a radical democratic state. Here, too, fidelity to the ethical whole (the Republic) sometimes required sacrifices on the part of individuals. But in a properly constituted republic, these sacrifices would be self-imposed requirements of the general will. As revolution turned to terror and blood became the regular currency of sacrifice, critics like Guizot saw the ancien régime's parochialism as a symptom of a larger problem with its underlying ethics, one it shared with the radicals aligned against it: its commitment to holism. Holism says that some social entities have a good not reducible to the good of their members. Additionally, these social wholes have their own rights that sometimes override individual rights (28, 59). These features make it easy for holist orders to justify sacrificing individuals for collective goods. If this is the disease, individualism of the sort associated with Kantian ethics can seem to be the cure. Chapter 2 argues that the new critical philosophy resulting from Kant's \"Copernican\" Revolution is a mixed bag. On the one hand, Kant offers no good reason for positing a noumenal world and locating freedom there (77–79). On the other hand, there is lasting promise in the idea that morality follows from each person's individual autonomy. And yet, in the end, Kant's arguments fail here, too. For deriving morality from autonomy requires an explicit commitment to impartiality, which does not follow from autonomy (83–102). And, even when suitably modified, Kant's ethical principles risk emptiness if they fail to take content from our relationships and soc","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135705988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Consciousness Is the Property of Dialectic\": What Hegel Taught Merleau-Ponty about Intentionality","authors":"Dimitris Apostolopoulos","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909129","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: I argue that Merleau-Ponty's reading of Hegel's account of experience exerts a significant and hitherto overlooked influence on his attempt to recast Phénoménologie de la perception 's account of intentionality. This reading informs two important claims of his later projects: that intentional relations are more fundamental than their relata, and that a metaphysical condition irreducible to consciousness or object constitutes the structure of intentionality. I argue that these positions inform key tenets of reversibility, and that a revisionary interpretation of Hegel's absolute offers Merleau-Ponty a model for the principle that individuates the basic conditions of experience. In addition to demonstrating that he was a more assiduous reader of Hegel than many commentators assume, and highlighting some overlooked debts to Hegel, these results show that Merleau-Ponty's later thought inherits significant idealist commitments, which should motivate us to reconsider its standing within post-Kantian philosophical currents.","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"188 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135706156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Spinoza, Emanation, and Formal Causation","authors":"Stephen Zylstra","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909126","url":null,"abstract":"abstract: Some recent scholars have argued that Spinoza's conception of causation should be understood in terms of the Aristotelian notion of a formal cause. I argue that while they are right to identify causation in Spinoza as a relation of entailment from an essence, they are mistaken about its philosophical pedigree. I examine three suggested lines of influence: (a) the late scholastic conception of emanation; (b) early modern philosophy of mathematics; and (c) Descartes's notion of the causa sui . In each case, the evidence indicates that causation in Spinoza should be categorized in Aristotelian terms as efficient and not formal.","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"43 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135706160","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Books of Interest","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a909139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a909139","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"45 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135706173","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Validation of a Biomechanical Injury and Disease Assessment Platform Applying an Inertial-Based Biosensor and Axis Vector Computation.","authors":"Wangdo Kim, Emir A Vela, Sean S Kohles, Victor Huayamave, Oscar Gonzalez","doi":"10.3390/electronics12173694","DOIUrl":"10.3390/electronics12173694","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Inertial kinetics and kinematics have substantial influences on human biomechanical function. A new algorithm for Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU)-based motion tracking is presented in this work. The primary aims of this paper are to combine recent developments in improved biosensor technology with mainstream motion-tracking hardware to measure the overall performance of human movement based on joint axis-angle representations of limb rotation. This work describes an alternative approach to representing three-dimensional rotations using a normalized vector around which an identified joint angle defines the overall rotation, rather than a traditional Euler angle approach. Furthermore, IMUs allow for the direct measurement of joint angular velocities, offering the opportunity to increase the accuracy of instantaneous axis of rotation estimations. Although the axis-angle representation requires vector quotient algebra (quaternions) to define rotation, this approach may be preferred for many graphics, vision, and virtual reality software applications. The analytical method was validated with laboratory data gathered from an infant dummy leg's flexion and extension knee movements and applied to a living subject's upper limb movement. The results showed that the novel approach could reasonably handle a simple case and provide a detailed analysis of axis-angle migration. The described algorithm could play a notable role in the biomechanical analysis of human joints and offers a harbinger of IMU-based biosensors that may detect pathological patterns of joint disease and injury.</p>","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10653259/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88382284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"\"Marrying Her Husband's Son\": Locke, the Politics of Sexual Morality, and the Case of Incest at the Church at Corinth","authors":"Brian Smith","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a902878","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a902878","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:This paper explores the tension between the role the magistrate plays in Locke's letters on toleration and the theory of sexual morality he develops in his analysis of the case of incest at the church at Corinth in his \"Paraphrases\" on Paul's Epistles. A son had married his father's ex-wife, a practice decried as \"heinous\" by seventeenth-century commentators. Contrary to the political uses of this case by members of the Anglican Church, Locke argues that moral communities should police themselves through private censure. At first glance, this sits uncomfortably with the view that the magistrate should punish adulterers and those who engage in \"heinous enormities.\" This paper seeks to reconcile these two visions by showing how the incentive structure of the civil law was meant to supplement the maximalist moral commitments of the religious communities that make up society.","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"61 1","pages":"425 - 449"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43933697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618–1680): A Philosopher in Her Historical Context ed. by Sabrina Ebbersmeyer and Sarah Hutton (review)","authors":"Allauren Samantha Forbes","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a902885","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a902885","url":null,"abstract":"faithfully reproduce the text quoted and that his square brackets mean something different from what they do in De Rijk’s edition. This issue aside, his conjecture is superfluous, as proven by a parallel passage in LM II.2: 118. Similarly, he quotes Abelard as saying “alterum istorum [est]: vel nox vel dies” (152). The “[est]” is Lenzen’s own, again superfluous, contribution to the text. By contrast, elsewhere he proposes to insert a non at LM II.2: 64.2. This time, he explains what he is doing, and I think his conjecture is right (128n3). Again, he advances some conjectures in the footnotes, and again I think he is right (132–33). The reader is told that Abelard in his Dialectica “sich sogar eines formalen Symbols, nämlich des Äkvivalenszeichens ‘↔’ bedient” (152). If true, this would certainly justify Lenzen’s sogar, but in fact the ‘↔’ is just one of De Rijk’s expedients to clarify the text to the reader. There are no such signs in the manuscript. A nonphilologist may be excused for this type of misinterpretation of an edition, but think of the implausibility of Abelard having used such a sign without this being trumpeted forth in standard histories of logic! To judge by his several correct translations of pieces of text, Lenzen knows his Latin, but inexplicably forgets it when he thrice writes omnis corpus instead of omne corpus (87), when Necessarium ex quolibet appears as Necessarium ex quodlibet (118 and 139), and when he twice writes “quoddam lapis non est homo” for “quidam lapis non est homo” (180). A difficult passage in the Dialectica becomes “äußerst apokryph” because Lenzen takes “huic falsae consequentiae . . . ex oppositis resistitur” to mean “dass die falsche Folgerung sich den opppositis widersetze” rather than “this false consequence can be countered by an argument from opposites” (174). The quotations in the footnotes are generally correct, yet one quotation has negative adverbio for negativo adverbio (22n1), and in another one, vera separativa has become vera separative (39n6). Incidentally, in the latter case, Jacobi and Strub’s edition shows that the true reading is universalis separativa, but the scribe of the manuscript that Geyer used for his edition of the Glose had misread universalis as vera. I suppose some may find this book a useful introduction to Abelard’s logic, but it must be used with caution. S t e n E b b e s e n University of Copenhagen","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"61 1","pages":"521 - 523"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45272805","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists by Chris Voparil (review)","authors":"R. Atkins","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a902890","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a902890","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"61 1","pages":"530 - 531"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48620614","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Abaelards Logik by Wolfgang Lenzen (review)","authors":"S. Ebbesen","doi":"10.1353/hph.2023.a902884","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.2023.a902884","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46448,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY","volume":"61 1","pages":"520 - 521"},"PeriodicalIF":0.7,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46069851","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}